Internet marketing entails a central dilemma. Advertisers and fund-raisers require cost-effective bulk methods of disseminating messages. The effectiveness of bulk messaging is enhanced by the use of personal profiling information to narrow the scope of distribution to individuals deemed most likely to be receptive. Databases of such information are commonly rented and sold for use by third parties, and have accordingly become valuable financial assets. For individual subjects, these practices create issues of privacy, ownership and control over their personal information. Such concerns have been exacerbated by the explosive growth of networking technology, which accelerates the propagation of personal information via the Internet.
Bulk messaging explicitly requested by an individual subject is known as permission-based or “opt-in” messaging. Examples include “listserv” email lists allowing subjects to request notification regarding topics or events of interest, and World Wide Web (Web) sites which invite visitors to fill out forms identifying subject or product categories about which they would like to receive information. In other cases, the opt-in election may be less obvious, as when an opt-in check box is pre-checked by default, or when permission to send messages is embedded in a lengthy end-user license to which a subject must agree before using a product or service.
Unsolicited messaging methods include both legitimate (“opt-out”) and illegitimate techniques, the latter commonly known as “spam.” Unsolicited bulk messaging, while cost-effective, may have the effect of antagonizing its recipients, many of whom view it as “junk mail,” don't read it, and may object to receiving it. Those who do read a particular message may bring to it a skeptical or even hostile attitude toward the product or service offered, the sender, or the messenger.
The opt-out model places the burden of diligence on the individual subject, who is deemed to have implicitly “opted in” merely by buying something on-line, opening an account, registering a warranty, filling out a preference survey, making a charitable donation, or posting a message to a news or discussion group. The organization collecting the information is presumed entitled not only to contact the subject at will, but to share her personal information with other organizations for profit, without explicit permission. The subject typically discovers after the fact that she has unknowingly opted in to a stream of unwanted messages from a variety of sources, and moreover has no way of tracing a given message back to a particular opt-in decision, or knowing who made money from the sharing of her personal information.
Typically, opt-out bulk messaging affords the subject a periodic opportunity to remove himself from a messaging database; however, opting out is often made difficult or inconvenient. Many consumers resent the burden of effort that the current opt-out system imposes on them, and most do not persist in opting out at every opportunity, given the great number of organizations and companies that typically have access to their personal information. Moreover, “spammers” are known to use opt-out responses as corroboration that the contact information is indeed current, and can be expected to exploit official “no-spam” lists the same way, given the opportunity.
Corporate privacy policies governing the use of opt-out contact information do not have the legal force of contracts, and can be changed by the marketing organization at will. Mergers, acquisitions, and financial exigency have led corporations to repudiate the privacy assurances under which consumers volunteered information. Bankruptcy proceedings result in the sale of customer databases and other contact lists to organizations which do not consider themselves accountable for the bankrupt company's privacy assurances and which are not held accountable under current law.
The decentralized and international nature of the Internet has spawned a huge and growing market in illicit personal information without the protection of privacy rules, opt-in, opt-out or otherwise. It is a relatively easy matter for organizations, particularly unregulated offshore companies, to use the so-called “dark Internet,” including inadequately protected private computers, to bombard consumers with messages using contact information obtained surreptitiously, without fear of accountability.
What is needed is a means of (a) providing messaging access to a highly targeted audience of willing message recipients, while (b) securing each individual's privacy, selectivity, ownership, and financial participation in the use of his personal information, and (c) ensuring legal accountability when data access is mandated by a court of law. Such a system would serve not only individual interests but marketing interests as well, by reclaiming the message channel, enhancing the cost-effectiveness of targeted bulk messaging, and regaining the attention, participation and goodwill of customers, clients, consumers and contributors.